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Walking mountains and coastlines has been a passion of mine for over 20 years. So has mapping, which I’ve done professionally in some form or other for about the same period. But it only occurred to me now to bring the two together in this post.

In Britain everybody associates outdoor maps with Ordnance Survey. Based on over 200 years of cartographic tradition, their brand is a household name and the gold standard by which other maps are judged. OS is so dominant that most people don’t even realise there are alternatives out there which, in some cases, may suit their needs better. First there is Harvey, a specialist mapmaker for walkers, cyclists and mountaineers. Harvey has been around for decades and is highly respected within their respective outdoor communities. I’ve used their maps particularly in mountainous areas such as Scotland. More recently I bought my first Splashmap, which is printed on novel waterproof fabric (more on that later). Splashmaps are made by a small start-up company who, to my knowledge, are the first to ride the wave of open data for the outdoor consumer sector.

So now that there are three serious map contenders in the British outdoors, how do they compare?

From left to right: OS Explorer, Harvey, Splashmap.

Paper vs digital

First I should clarify that I’m only reviewing paper maps here, not digital. Digital mapping certainly has its place, but I take it as a given that you will always take a paper map and compass at least as a back-up – your local mountain rescue or coastguard team will thank you for it.

There will always be a market for paper maps, and the recent hysteria about the “death” of paper maps is simply misguided. Besides many people do not seem to realise that papers maps are made from digital maps, not vice-versa. Far from killing off paper maps, digital mapping improves the way paper maps are made. With digital, you can customise maps or just print them on demand, making sure retailers don’t have to flog left-over stocks of outdated maps. Enough said.

The test terrain

I recently compared all three maps on a half-day trek across Dartmoor, my nearest national park. Dartmoor is renowned for its fickle weather and tricky navigation. Even though it’s mostly a featureless expanse of wilderness, rising barely above 600 metres, the terrain is easy to underestimate. Many people have got lost in bad weather, and over the years a few unlucky ones died of exposure. No wonder Dartmoor also serves as a military training ground. What better terrain to put these maps to the test?

View of northern Dartmoor.

First impressions: Cartography

OS maps come in two scales, Explorer (25K) and Landranger (50K). Both are targeted at a wide audience, for multiple uses. This inevitably makes their cartography a bit of a compromise. I’ve never been a great fan of the Landrangers – their scale is just that bit too small, and the colours a bit too boudoir for my liking. Explorer maps, on the other hand, are highly detailed, and the cartography manages to just about balance all this information with legibility – just. In very steep or multi-use terrain the detail can become overpowering, with too many features competing for attention. On the bleak plains of Dartmoor, however, OS Explorer works very well: there is lots of space for contours, streams, tracks, place names and other detail not to get in the way of each other.

Harvey maps are tailored towards the single pursuit of walking or cycling. Their pastel cartography is beautiful to look at, and tones down any features that are less relevant for outdoor pursuits (e.g. urban features or road classifications). The whole map is filled with pleasing natural hues, colour-coded for elevation, leaving no white spaces. No other map I know reproduces the lay of the land as clearly and effectively. This makes Harvey maps particularly useful in mountainous terrain but also on the high moors of Dartmoor it works very well. And with the 40K scale the whole national part fits on a single map sheet without losing important detail.

Splashmaps are the new kid on the block. Their cartography seems to prioritise the needs of off-road cyclists above everything else: bridleways look like they’ve been painted on with orange lipstick. Although not great in aesthetic terms, it must be quite good for blurry eyes after a death-defying downhill ride. Other than that, the Splashmap cartography is a bit reminiscent of continental-style mapping such as the French IGN or Swiss Topo. There’s no area shading except for woodland and water bodies, so at first sight the prominence of line features like contours, roads or tracks can be a bit overwhelming. This is accentuated by the linework being slightly thicker than normal, which isn’t very pretty. Like Harvey’s, the Splashmap is printed at a scale of 40K, so the whole of Dartmoor fits on one sheet.

Verdict: Harvey is the beauty, Splashmap the beast, and OS a bit of both.

Detail and completeness

Note I’m avoiding the term ‘accuracy’ here. A map is an abstract representation of the world and so will always require a degree of interpretation and prioritisation. These days positional accuracy is not really a concern anymore; what matters is completeness and fitness-for-purpose. OS and Harvey have their own data collection operations, so they are in complete control of the detail shown in their products. Aerial and ground surveys, however, are not something a young start-up company could ever hope to afford. Splashmaps therefore rely entirely on third party sources, so-called ‘open’ datasets. Freely downloadable from government or volunteer sites, these include OS OpenData, OpenStreetMap and local councils.

OS Explorer, thanks to its larger 25K scale, is by far the most detailed map on the market. On the bleak plains of Dartmoor, any detail is reassuring and so the Explorer map excels here: critical navigational landmarks like trig pillars, cairns, stream crossings, ancient stone circles or standing stones are all clearly shown. OS Explorer also offers some useful and unique features not found on other maps, e.g. it clearly marks all common land where you are legally free to roam away from tracks and paths.

The Harvey map is forced to prioritise a bit more by its smaller 40K scale but gets the balance just about right. As it is a specialist map for walking, the detail shown is pretty much perfect for this activity. Even so, I would prefer it if archaeological features like ancient stones circles and markers were shown a bit more prominently as, on Dartmoor, there are a lot of them and they’re important navigational aids.

The detail and comprehensiveness of Dartmoor’s Splashmap is really impressive given it’s all built on free data. At first sight there’s hardly any difference with OS or Harvey, except for style. After some inspection, however, there are a few noticeable omissions. First, the Splashmap doesn’t show the expansive military ranges. On Dartmoor these are a key feature as they can be off-limits to the public on certain days. Then there is something weird going on with car parks. A big one I’ve recently used near Willsworthy Camp isn’t on the map but others, near Okehampton Camp, are on it even though I’m pretty sure they’re off-limits (military use only). The Splashmap is also missing archaeological navigation features, and the place names can be a bit hit and miss (e.g. the prominent Yes Tor or Haytor Rocks aren’t marked, although the vast majority of tors are). Still, this is version 1 of a new product created by a garage start-up, so I’m inclined to cut Splashmaps a bit of slack (and we’ll come to its unique selling point in a minute). Besides, OS and Harvey don’t get everything right either. On my recent walk near Belstone I came across this prominent standing stone (at SX 640 925) which, for some reason, isn’t shown on any of the maps:

The missing stone.

Verdict: No map is perfect but OS is best for overall detail, and Harvey takes the prize for fitness-for-purpose. Splashmaps still have a bit of catching-up to do but greatly exceeded my expectations on what is possible with open data.

Tracks and paths

Walkways are a bit of a bugbear of mine. Maybe I’m too simplistic but as a walker I’m really not interested in whether the trail I’m walking on is a track, footpath, bridleway, green lane or whatever. Combined with rights of way, the different types of routes can result in a baffling array of line styles.

Basically I just want to know if there is a path of any kind, and whether I’m allowed to walk on it. If the answer to both questions is yes then great, just show it in a single style. If there is no right of way, it should just be greyed out. End of story. Cyclists would no doubt disagree with me here – and that is the inherent problem any mapmaker faces. How do you keep everybody happy? You don’t. (But more on this later.)

Still, none of the maps satisfy me here. Whether OS, Harvey or Splashmap, walkways tend to hide in plain sight, and I always need to look twice before I’m sure to be looking at a path and not something else.

Ironically Harvey is the worst offender here. It uses a different symbol for every type of track, path, road, or long distance trail, and then again a different one for every type of right of way. This results in a confusing medley of solid or dotted lines, often overlaid with tiny circular dots of different colours or sizes. OS Explorer gets an out-of-jail card because its larger scale works well on the featureless moors, but I’ve had problems in other places such as the Lake District. The Splashmap thankfully uses much fewer categories for walkways – hooray! – but then chooses to paint them purple which is hard to distinguish from the brown contours. Which explains the need for orange lipstick.

Verdict: All are unsatisfactory in different ways but Splashmaps are on the right, err, track.

Grid reference markings

This has been another frustration over the years. You want to take a quick GPS position and then check where you are on the map. This normally takes a few seconds – except it doesn’t, because eastings and northings aren’t marked on every grid square. So you end up unfolding the map, read the grid reference off the nearest markings, then trace your way back to your location, which may well be on the opposite side of the fold. By that time you will have forgotten what the GPS reading was, so you start again… If you’ve ever attempted this in a howling gale or horizontal rain, you know what I mean. This is where digital mapping devices come into their own – as long as they are waterproof and their battery lasts all the way.

OS Explorer repeats grid references every 10 kilometre squares in both directions. Harvey uses a more irregular spacing of 10 x 7 (or more, depending where you are on the map), but the dark blue font used for grid references is hard to see as it blends into the map. The Splashmap uses a spacing of 14 x 14 squares. Like OS, it uses a light blue font that is easier to spot than Harvey’s, but the spacing is far too wide to be useful. However, as the Splashmap is made of fold-free fabric it eases the task of panning along to your nearest grid reference.

Still, I’d really prefer something like a 4 x 4 spacing. This is baffling as it would be easy to fix. Am the only one who is having this problem?

Verdict: All unsatisfactory, or maybe it’s just me.

Map material and waterproofness

Britain is not renowned for its dry weather. Combined with regular breezes blown in from the Atlantic, the experience of unfolding a map can be like being slapped in the face with a wet fish. A good map needs to be rip- and waterproof.

The pure paper versions of OS Explorer don’t last 5 minutes in the wilderness, but the more popular ones (including Dartmoor) also come laminated. Although very sturdy and waterproof, the lamination is heavy and bulky, and after a while ends up with bubbles and stretch marks along the creases. With OS Explorer, I also don’t like that the map is double-sided because, just like a piece of buttered toast falling on the floor, I always open the wrong side first.

Harvey’s map is made of thin polyethylene which feels like paper even though it is a plastic material. This makes it totally waterproof, highly rip-resistant, lightweight and nice to hold. It just smells a bit odd. But as far as ‘paper’ maps go, Harvey used to be best in class.

I say ‘used to’ because that was before Splashmaps arrived on the scene. It’s like one of those revelations, “why has nobody thought of this before?” As it turns out, some people have. Splashmaps are inspired by the fabric maps used by pilots during World War II. These maps could be hidden in clothing, didn’t rustle, and doubled up for multiple uses such as a sling or bandage. Splashmaps have taken this concept into the 21st century with a high-tech fabric that enables a high quality map print whilst being fully washable. The fact that I can carelessly stuff the map into my pocket like a handkerchief, and then pull it out – wholly or partially – without having to faff around folding the map, is a total winner. The fabric doesn’t crease even after being left squashed and crumpled in a pocket for a few hours, and the material makes it really easy to grab your area of interest.

A wet day on Dartmoor: Splashmap in its element.

The only issue with the Dartmoor Splashmap is its size (it’s like a tablecloth) but thankfully its creators resisted the temptation to print it double-sided. Maybe I’ll just cut the map into bitesize pieces… But the material is awesome.

Verdict: The Splashmap literally blows the competition out of the water.

Customisability

All three map providers offer customisation options, although I’ve never tried any of them myself. With a few clicks on their website, both OS and Splashmaps allow you to order a map centred on your exact area of interest.

Splashmaps also have a service to print standard OS Explorer maps onto their fabric – this could well be the way forward if you want the best of both worlds, albeit a bit pricey. Splashmaps and Harvey also offer bespoke mapping options for particular needs, although for some of these you may be better off printing your own map with a digital solution like Anquet or MemoryMap. On the hills a disposable sheet of A4 paper (wrapped in a plastic sleeve) can be quite a good option, but it requires a bit of an upfront investment in software or data.

Verdict: Try it for yourself.

Open data to the rescue?

I’ve tracked developments in open data for years, so I’ve known what’s been available. But based on the Splashmaps experience the overall quality of this data is still a bit of an eye opener to me. Sure, there are a few glitches that need ironing out but that is just a matter of time.

Open data could well be the gateway to greater choice in personalised or custom maps. Inspired by Splashmaps, I downloaded the 50k terrain and vector data from Ordnance Survey into my GIS software (if you’re new to this, try QGIS). The quality really is very good, and it made me wonder whether I should start making my own maps for personal use, exactly the way I like them. I realise this isn’t an option for everyone but that is where companies like Splashmaps come in. Is there a new market opening up after all?

As you read this, you may be wondering why you should pay for a map that is entirely based on free data. Well, anybody who has ever made maps professionally knows how much work is involved in designing a good map from raw information (compiling, reclassifying, merging, de-duplicating, symbolising, and so on). Then there are the costs of production and distribution which, for any physical product, are significant. So only a fraction of the cost of a physical map actually resides in the data. Life is tough in the mapmaking business, so any new entrants working to offer a bit more choice and competition should be welcomed. Kudos to Splashmaps for taking on this challenge.

Verdict: Watch this space.

And the winner is…

Navigational overkill.

Well, this depends on your point of view – and I’m not being lazy here. There is simply no such thing as the perfect map. Whatever you do, a map is always a compromise between reality and abstraction. There are many variables at play, and the ideal map very much depends on your particular use and preferences.

In an ideal world, I would love the ability the print a Harvey map onto Splashmap fabric, enhanced with a few features from OS Explorer as well as personal additions such as grid reference markings and simpler route symbology. Fat chance you say, but why not? These companies complement each other’s offerings, and with ever more accessible digital data and printing technologies (3D scaled models, anyone?) it doesn’t take a huge leap for someone to rearrange (and license) the relevant bits to create new magic.

This is the ground that Splashmaps have begun to break, and hopefully more will follow in their footsteps – on a clearly marked path.

Disclaimer / Re-use:

This review is entirely independent, unscientific, anecdotal and based on personal experience only. I am not an employee, partner, or investor in any of the map sellers reviewed. Use at your own risk. In the outdoors, maps are no substitute for good judgment.

As all material on this blog, you are free to re-use this article under the Creative Commons licence.

“When is a door not a door? – When it is a jar.” Geddit? Eight-year olds find this hilarious. A door can be open, closed, or ajar. Or a jar filled with jam.

The same goes for geospatial software. Today a blog post from Boundless, a growing and innovative open source geospatial company, made the rounds on Twitter, asking whether Esri’s use of the word “open” isn’t a bit misleading.

Well yes, of course it is.

Creating “open” add-ons for closed-source software isn’t truly open. No quantity of Github projects or fluffy bunnies hopping around open communities can hide that fact. If code can’t run without the use of a closed, proprietary application, it’s a bit disingenuous to call it open source.

But of course, it’s not totally closed either. Open add-ons developed by open communities can still save you lots of time or bring other benefits. And anyone who’s ever been to San Diego knows that Esri has always had a strong community spirit. So it’s not surprising that they share an affinity with other groups, including open source. Who knows, Esri might even release more of their stuff as open source as time goes on. I guess anything that sustains and grows their billion-dollar revenue is fine with them.

Open, but please close the door: Photo by Leo Reynolds (Flickr CC)

There are advantages to open source software, and there are some disadvantages. It’s the same with proprietary stuff. I’ve no desire to go into the pros and cons here. The point is, why should it be a choice of either/or? Can’t we use both?

Whether you’re an individual or an organisation, picking the right tool for a job is a very personal thing. It’s a bit like choosing a tie or a handbag. There are many factors at play that will inform your decision – from old habits to future requirements, from costs to desires, from objective to more human and irrational considerations.

Geospatial tools still have a lot of catching up to do with other worlds such as Design or Data Science. But open or closed, I don’t see why one side should win over the other. At the end of the day, technology is just a tool: what matters is what you do with it. Unless your instincts are inherently tribal or dogmatic, your interests are probably best served by taking a pragmatic approach that uses whatever works best for you: open, closed – or ajar.

History is boring. Well, at least it was when I went to school. It was only later in life that I realised the problem was with the teaching, not the history.

Maps in particular can bring history to life and make it exciting. When I worked for a company that sold historical maps, it struck me that people always seemed more interested in seeing their house on a 100-year-old map than a present one. And if their house wasn’t that old, they were still curious to see what was in its place previously.

But I digress. I should be talking about King George III.

Now that’s what I call a map collection

King George III, who was born in 1738, never travelled further than Weymouth but knew a lot about the world. That’s because, over his lifetime, he collected about 50,000 maps and sketches. His topographical collection eventually spanned the entire globe, with more than half of all items relating to areas outside Britain. There’s even a six-foot tall world atlas from 1660 that requires four people to lift it.

A river runs through it: One of 50,000+ items in King George’s hip garage collection.

The man obviously had a passion for maps and geography but, strangely, this doesn’t even get a mention on his Wikipedia page. But he was clearly ahead of his time in realising the value of mapping, and the diverse ways in which it could be used.

How do we know this? Well, the British Library recently opened this treasure trove and are now busy digitising its contents for the benefit of the worldwide public.

But there’s a slight hitch: they have neither enough budget nor enough people to make it happen. They need your help. So far they’ve raised half of their £1.2 million target which is required to put the whole map collection online.

This however does not include georeferencing, which they hope to achieve via their georefencer crowdsourcing page – using skilled and passionate people like you.

So go on, you know what to do. For questions or info just contact Emma.Johnson (at) bl.uk, +44 (0)20 7412 7034 (her details are also listed on the British Library website).

As part of my job in the global energy industry I meet a lot of geoscientists. Highly passionate about all aspects of earth science, they’re geologists, geophysicists, or environmental scientists. They use GIS daily but don’t consider themselves to be GIS professionals any more than they are Excel or software professionals. For them, GIS is a means to an end.

When one geoscientist recently said that “GIS is not as simple as it used to be”, it pretty much summed up the mood I’m picking up in a lot of places. The state of GIS, data and IT are a big frustration. The geoscience community has been using geospatial tools for decades, but the issues they face with GIS have remained unchanged – in fact, they’re getting worse.

The technology has advanced dramatically in recent years, so what’s going on?

Photo: Futureatlas.com via Flickr (Creative Commons)

Geoscience ain’t Google or Facebook

We all know how to fire up Google Maps and look for the nearest coffee shop, but geoscientists do not have that luxury. Their data comes from everywhere: digitised from analog sources, scraped from literature or intelligence reports, imported from spreadsheets, dug up from archives, copied from network drives, extracted from databases, downloaded from web feeds.

As geoscientists forensically piece together their story – say, an environmental impact study, or the potential of a gas field hidden under a mile of sand or water – there are as many data formats as datasets. This is quite different to internet companies whose businesses are built on data that is natively digital: they can simply plug in the firehose and suck up whatever comes out.

So when geoscientists have painstakingly assembled their data, the last thing they need is a GIS that doesn’t do what they need, or is like brain surgery to operate.

What has GIS ever done for geoscientists?

From the perspective of a geoscientist, there has been little progress in the world of GIS. If you put yourself in their shoes, this is what we’ve given them over the past decade or so:

First, there were the delusional aspirations of standardizing everything, so that data conversion would no longer be required. The world would consist of spatial data infrastructures and portals, seamlessly joined together by open standards. We all know what happened to these, because no GIS professional today can survive without FME or GDAL. Most industries do not operate like the public sector. The “spatial is special” mantra merely reinforced data silos, hampering integration with other domains.

Coupled with SDIs, web-based GIS also proved that the GIS industry can take a perfectly simple web browser and turn it into a fiendishly slow and complex map system. This came in different incarnations until Google Maps finally put us out of our misery in 2005.

Meanwhile, desktop GIS has gone full-circle from being the professional’s tool to “everyone should use it”, and back to being the professional’s tool. Well, at least it is no longer pretending to be simple, and vendors can now freely praise its complexity as sophistication.

More recently arrived the mobile mapping apps, which – at last! – were simple to use (probably because they were not designed by GIS people). But alas, it is quite a leap from finding the nearest Starbucks to doing geological data interpretation. And so again, the geoscientists fell through the cracks. GIS vendors, forced to respond to the threat of internet mapping start-ups, spread themselves very thinly and ended up pleasing neither its new nor its core user bases.

Then finally came Open Source, the saviour who was going to deliver long-suffering GIS users from the evil clutches of proprietary vendor lock-in. Great. Except that, open source GIS is still GIS. It’s still growing arms and legs, just like any other GIS. It tries to cater for every audience, just like any other GIS. Progress is measured in added functionality. In this model it simply does not occur to developers to take something away to make it more usable. Steve Jobs would be horrified.

What happened to GIS empowering people?

Professional mapping can now be done in hundreds of ways including proprietary, open source, desktop, web/cloud-hosted, and mobile solutions. Faced with such an array of generic options, where everything is possible but nothing does what you need straight off the shelf, we’ll have to forgive the geoscientists if they’re not ecstatic about what’s on offer.

The task of making GIS usable for a particular purpose falls to the users themselves who, of course, have neither the time nor the skills to do it. Sure, there are partner developers who can provide add-ons or customisations, but that’s not the point.

GIS was always about empowering people. But GIS tools defeat their purpose when you need a whole GIS department to support basic workflows, and a whole IT department to support the GIS stack. People end up working for the technology, not the other way round.

So when the ever-quotable Brian Timoney recently tweeted that most enterprise GIS requirements would be satisfied with Google Earth and networked KML files on a shared drive, he was not far off the truth. Such a pragmatic architecture would certainly have its drawbacks, but in some scenarios it might be easier to work around these than create what you need with a ‘proper’ GIS stack.

It is not surprising that some geoscientists still feel nostalgic for ArcView 3. Sure, this might show their age, but in their eyes ArcView 3 represented everything that a GIS should be: simple enough to use, advanced and flexible enough to do something useful with. Of course, in a modern connected environment ArcView 3 would be woefully inadequate. But in today’s world nothing seems to have taken its place in terms of usability. QGIS comes close but unfortunately it’s beginning to look more and more like ArcMap, which it hopes to displace. For many geoscientists this is barking up the wrong tree.

First the cake, then the icing

To this day GIS has not truly offered geoscientists what they need. Where are the innovative solutions for dealing with the variety of geoscience data? Where are the productivity tools to simply assemble digital scrapbooks of georeferenced information? Where are the flexible data models that enable thematic harvesting and analysis irrespective of data type? Where are the analytical tools that can handle dirty and incomplete data without hours of pre-processing? Where are the predictive user interfaces that only show relevant options?

These tools are emerging, of course… but not in the GIS world. GIS software still assumes that the data is just there, nice and clean. And so it requires a lot of sweat, mud and tears before you even get there – many don’t.

Meanwhile, data mining and analytics packages are slowly absorbing GIS functions into their tools. From the open-source R to the proprietary SAS, many now come with mapping functionality as a standard. It is the same with specialist geoscience packages, such as those from Schlumberger or Landmark. None of these may ever reach the full geospatial specification of a GIS, but why should they? Once you’ve got all the data in one place, with decent analytics tools mapping just becomes one data representation out of many. For illustration, just look at the SAS page above.

Spatial is not special. We in the GIS community have always assumed that because geoscientists like working with maps, they will always like GIS. This is not the case. If GIS is the icing, we first need to help our users bake the cake. If we don’t do it, somebody else will. And if the icing is too complex or expensive, they will just eat the cake without it.

UPDATE 09OCT13: This post has now received over 1,000 hits and 30+ re-tweets. Thank you. But there’s been relatively few comments… surely many of you won’t just simply agree? Agree or not, feel free to add more thoughts below.

On a recent trip to the US it occurred to me that BA’s 777 aircraft is a perfect illustration of our unequal distribution of resources, and how we might solve this conundrum for the benefit of everyone.

The problem

At 30 000 feet, the most precious resource (after breathable air) is leg room. And so BA’s 777 cabin is divided into four classes where passengers are granted increasing floor space in return for higher fares. It’s astonishing: over half the aircraft is dedicated to First and Business (Club) Class. I guess it reflects the wealth of the carrier’s host nation. But even so, the aircraft’s most precious resource is distributed rather unequally across four classes. This is not dissimilar to the general distribution of wealth although, to keep the same proportions on board, the front half would have fewer passengers than cabin staff.

Still, as it is 62 people at the front occupy the same space as 162 at the rear*. One passenger in First consumes about the same square footage as 4 or 5 people in Economy. It’s a miracle that such a back-loaded plane can even take off:

Four-class seat layout of a British Airways 777. 122 seats in Economy, 40 in Premium Economy, 48 in Club and 14 in First (total 224). Source: seatplans.com

The reality

Over the years I’ve been lucky enough to experience all four classes on long-haul flights. Being 6’7” tall I (barely) survived overnight flights in Economy but I also cruised in Premium or stretched out in Business on corporate missions, and slept like a baby in First thanks to a couple of accidental upgrades.

Think about it. Flying is a miracle as well as a privilege – I always ask for a window seat so I can enjoy the view, which I’ll never tire of. This privilege is available whatever the class. And your prime goal is to go from A to B. First Class does not get there any faster. You might save 10 minutes at the immigration queue or baggage carousel, but that’s not worth the extra few grand.

When you think about it objectively, First Class in the air is equivalent to a youth hostel dormitory on the ground. Where else would you share a room with a dozen strangers? Ditto with airline lounges. If they really are that nice, why don’t cafés and pubs look more like them?

I call bullshit. It’s mostly a status thing. It’s outdated and we need to get over it. In an age of resource scarcity we can no longer afford this collective stupidity.

The solution

The solution is quite simple. If the whole aircraft was kitted out in Premium Economy, everybody would be happy enough. In Premium, even I can stretch out enough to avoid Deep Vein Thrombosis. Besides you get served half-edible food and entertained by a decent in-flight movie collection. Out of all classes, Premium Economy offers by far the best value for money. What’s more, if every seat on the plane was a Premium chair, you’d fit 134 more people on board than with the current layout – an increase of a whopping 60%! And because everybody would be treated equally, there would be no smugness or guilt at the front, and no despair or resentment at the back. Everybody would just “be”. Happy days!

The 777 re-arranged with an all-Premium configuration (total: 358), as photoshopped with GIMP.

The economics

But wait a minute. What about the cost?

Airline fares are notoriously complex so let’s make some assumptions here. Let’s say the average return fare for a typical long-haul flight is £700 for Economy, £1500 for Premium, £4000 for Business, and £8000 for First. So with the standard cabin layout the total fare would be around £450,000. In the airline business it’s notoriously difficult to make a profit, so let’s also assume that this is a fair return. Now, if we divide this figure by the number of seats in the all-Premium layout, that averages out at £1250 per seat. Outch.

When doing these sums you realise that people in First and Business Class actually subsidise the people in Economy through overinflated fares (no wonder airlines are keen to attract and retain these lucrative customers). Even if the nirvana of equality does not come true, this should provide at least some comfort for the rest of us.

But imagine if we could somehow pull off a one-class flight (and society). Would this be worth paying £1250 each? That’s almost twice the current Economy fare. If the wealth across our society was as equally distributed as the seats on this all-Premium airliner, would £1250 be affordable to all?

I guess it would. And it would more naturally reflect the true cost of flying, economically and environmentally, as well as make more efficient use of resources – in the case of the airliner, 60% more capacity.

What do you think? Do I need to get my head tested, or am I onto something?

* Correction 01Oct13: Not 54 at the front vs 160 at the rear, as posted originally (this was a gremlin that had slipped in during early drafting). So 14 First + 48 Business = 62 seats, and 40 Premium + 122 Economy = 162 seats.

There won’t be many readers wondering why I haven’t posted on here for a while but if you stumble on this page, yes it is still alive. In fact my last post, Which type of mapmaker are you? was my most successful ever in terms of views (it rocketed once it got a mention on TechCrunch!) but it also coincided with the start of a new job back in March.

I’m loving my new role and it’s been busy: in my first 3 months I’ve seen clients on 3 continents. My head is bubbling over with ideas for new blog posts but there’s just not been the time (except for a couple of posts on GIS strategy design over at the Exprodat blog). I’m now looking forward to some holidays and will hopefully be able to post new stuff here soon(ish).

Bye for now, and I hope you have a great summer – Thierry

P.S. Thanks to Steven Feldman for inspiring this blog post with his recent update:-)

Once, in my earlier career, I performed a “Geomatics Striptease” during a presentation. Before you get worried, it was just a term I had coined to ask the geomatics profession a simple question: What unique skill do you have left after all the layers of overlapping disciplines have been peeled off? After stripping away IT, geography, GIS, remote sensing and so on, the one core skill unique to the profession was geodetic positioning – making sure that things are precisely & accurately in the right place.

Anybody can make a map these days so, beyond that, what unique skill can you contribute to society? Whatever your profession, you can probably list any number of skills that other disciplines also offer. So what is unique about you? Why should your customer pay you and not someone else? If you’re unsure about the answer, a good starting point might be to determine your preferred mapping style. It will provide some clues as you what makes you unique. So I’ve made this chart to help you find out: